This invention relates to disk drives and, more particularly, to a self-diagnostic method and apparatus for a disk drive.
The use of so-called "excercisers" to perform certain diagnostics with respect to disk drives is known. In the past, such excercisers utilized the internal disk drive control system itself through the main interface of the drive to run the diagnostic routines. This required a level of complexity in terms of hardware for the excerciser close to that of a disk drive controller. Not only is this expensive, but it also necessitates the provision of additional hardware in the drive itself in order to run the diagnostic routines. This additional hardware, aside from also being expensive, is unnecessary for normal user operation and may promote malfunctions.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a more efficient and less expensive manner of running diagnostics with respect to a disk drive.